Three's a Zoo
by storiewriter
Summary: Dipper takes the triplets to the zoo, and that ends as well as anybody would predict. Transcendence AU


**A/N:** Seiya234 on tumblr asked: I would love to know what happened in the basement. If not that-anything with dipper and the triplets!

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It had been a great idea; Dipper got some quality bonding time with his niblings, and Mabel got some quality alone time with Henry. Too bad this idea went the way all great ones concerning the triplets went.

"Willow, where did your sister go?" Dipper asked after coming back with an armful of expensive park snacks for the kids. He had left them at the rubber-coated picnic table with strict instructions to _not_ leave, and he really should not have been surprised to come back to two children instead of three.

Willow shrugged and snagged a bag of mini Oreo cookies out of his stash. She looked dangerously bored. "I dunno, she just said she'd be right back."

"I think she went back to the aquarium," Hank said, sneaking a cookie out despite Willow's protests. "Even if she _did_ go to the bathroom first."

Dipper sighed, then handed his niblings the rest of the snacks. "Put these in your bags, we're going to go find your sister."

They grinned and squabbled over the snack pile, growing increasingly loud despite Dipper trying to quiet them. When they nearly tore a bag of chips apart, Dipper snapped at them to 'Behave, would you two _please_?' and stole the chips for himself. He could feel the human disguise wearing his patience thinner, even if the energy from the Doritos helped take the edge off.

It was thankfully not hard to find Acacia once they'd made their way past the petting zoo and into the Aquatic Dream building. Unfortunately, it was far too easy to find Acacia.

"Miss, _please_ get out of the Otter tank." The poor employee looked like he had been pleading for the past hour, and there was a security guard talking into a walkie-talkie next to him. "You're disturbing the animals."

Acacia laughed underwater, and Dipper now knew that yes, he had seen her stuffing her swimsuit into her bag earlier that day. She smacked her palm against the glass case and burbled some incomprehensible nonsense.

Dipper felt his eye twitching, and was vaguely aware that both Willow and Hank had taken two steps away from him. He stalked forward through the crowd and pushed his way to the front. The security guard spotted him and stepped in his way.

"I'm sorry sir, we're going to have to ask you to—"

" _Acacia Ruth Pines_ ," Dipper rumbled, and the security guard took a step away at the tone in his voice. " _What do you think you're doing_."

Acacia's face went even paler and she pushed herself back up to the surface of the otter pool, whose legal inhabitants were nowhere to be seen. Dipper wondered how much she'd terrified the animals already.

"Is…is that your child sir?" The male employee sounded faint, and he turned to face him. He was, almost irritatingly enough, a few inches taller than Dipper.

"My niece, actually," he said, looking up and thinking that if he could float, this height issue would be nonexistent. "My apologies. If I can help in any way possible…"

The employee smiled in a bit of a strained way. _Andrew Hopkins, sophomore at the nearby college in Bent, wished he had gotten a desk job after all_. "We have sent in a few people to fish her out, so if you could stand by and take her out of the park…"

"Of course." Dipper smiled, wide and grinding his teeth and desperately tightening his hold on his human appearance. It wouldn't do to show two sets of shark-sharp teeth to the world and stress the Bent Zoo and Aquarium employee any further

The lone security guard's walkie-talkie hissed with static, and a muffled voice emerged from it. She lifted it and said, "Repeat please; Guardian found for disturbance in Otter exhibit, over."

Dipper turned to find Willow and Hank again, but when he looked at the crowd, he couldn't see them. The empty chip bag crinkled in his hand

"Disturbance in monkey cage; repeat, child climbing into monkey cage, approximately nine years, curly red hair. Over."

His eye twitched again. _Never again_ , he vowed, because if two of his charges were in trouble, the third was undoubtedly causing a ruckus somewhere else.

Two hours later, Acacia had slipped through security's fingers and had jumped head-first into the shark tank, screaming something about living only once, Hank had displayed exactly how mediocre he was at climbing trees but how proficient he was at manipulating grown adults into letting him do what he wanted, and Willow had managed to set free all of the petting zoo animals as well as ensconce herself in the back corner of the giraffe exhibit, sitting in one of the Jackalberry trees and reading a book until security found her.

"Please do not come back," said Andrew, smile almost stitched on. Dipper felt just a little sorry, because damn his niblings had outdone themselves.

Dipper nodded and herded his dirty, soggy group of children out into the parking lot and then to one of the complimentary picnic benches, parked under a group of trees.

He stared down at them. "You know what you did was wrong."

To their credit, they were looking down, auras filled with guilty colors and spots of regret, though Acacia was still being affected by her adrenaline rush. "Sorry Uncle Dipper," they intoned.

Dipper ran his tongue over his still-blunt teeth in thought. "And you know that now you won't be able to go back until you're at least eighteen, so we can't go to the zoo again."

"We could go to the one in Portland," Hank mumbled. "But yes."

Dipper flicked his nose. "Do you really think I'll take you to the zoo anytime soon after that fiasco?"

"Your colors say you're amused, so maybe," Willow said, and Acacia jumped up.

"Yes! Yes! Zoo time, zoo time, zoo time!"

"What else do my colors say, Willow?" Dipper kept Acacia at arm's length, because he was going to try to stay as dry as possible for just a few moments longer, thank you very much.

"…That you're upset with us." Willow blinked at him. "We're not getting ice cream, are we."

"Nope!" Dipper chirped. "But tell you what. We're going to go home, and then we're going over to Aunty Melody's and Uncle Soos's to play with their brood of children. No giraffes, no sharks, a couple monkeys, and you guys are kept in one place. How does that sound?"

"You're just doing that to keep Dad from getting mad that you interrupted his alone time with Mom," Hank deadpanned. Acacia snickered. "And that we got into lots of trouble."

Dipper shuddered. "Well, your Dad is…this will take the edge off! Now, we could always go face his wrath sooner or later, and trust me—you guys will get the brunt of it more than I will."

Acacia put her finger on her chin, then nodded. "To Aunty Melody's!"

"Banzai!" Willow yelled, thrusting her fist into the air, and Henry jumped up. Acacia squirmed and plastered her wet self all over Dipper, who felt only resignation as he let his human disguise slip away, shielded from the rest of the world behind the shrubbery.

"All right then, let's go." Dipper grinned. "Enjoy your freedom while you can, kids."

When Acacia tried to visit the Bent Zoo and Aquarium years later with Reina, the middle-aged male employee, whose nametag read _Andrew,_ took one look at her and shut the window in their faces.


End file.
